


Rescue

by sajastar



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gen, I know from this tags this looks like a comic fic but I promise it's movie, Rescue Missions, Venom is a grump with a warm gooey heart, background qpr Eddie/Venom, empathy is annoying, misuse of forensic linguistics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-25 14:21:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22157509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajastar/pseuds/sajastar
Summary: Eddie's decides to play hero and it's up to Venom and a surprise friend to save the day.~~~Weston flipped through some files and then pulled out his phone. “Maris, where are you with the kid?” A pause. “You got him? Good. Update me when Thompson responds to the demands.” He put away the files, turned around—don’t look up, don’t look up— and went back to the main office.Eddie took a slow, deep breath through their fanged maw.Well. Definitely up to crime.His mind was racing.He has not discovered us,Venom reassured him.We are not a kid. Or Thompson. We are safe.He’s kidnapped someone, V. A child. He’s holding a child for ransom.Ah. That explained it. Kidnapped children, in Eddie’s mind, were relevant to them, because of course all bad things on the planet were somehow relevant to them. Not like they had enough problems of their own.
Relationships: Eddie Brock & Flash Thompson, Eddie Brock & Venom Symbiote, Flash Thompson & Venom Symbiote
Comments: 8
Kudos: 59





	Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> It/its pronouns for Venom. This is loosely in the same universe as Talking to Yourself, but it didn't really fit with the theme of that series so I'm posting it separately. Also I got tired of typing Venom's dialogue in all caps. You definitely don't need to have read Talking to Yourself to read this. 
> 
> CW: Mentions of abusive families.
> 
> Thanks to bakageta for her invaluable help as a beta!

**If you do not want to do this, we should go home.**

_No. I told you, Weston is shady as fuck. I need more information._

Venom resettled their weight on the roof. Their gleaming white eyes stayed on the glass tower across the street, but it was Eddie’s attention processing what they saw. V’s own attention was on Eddie.

 **You are uncomfortable,** it said at last.

_I don’t like mixing my work with…_

Them. The partition of _them_ things and _me_ things still stung, but the bite was dulled by routine.

**Then what are we doing here.**

_Weston’s been implicated in all kinds of shit. The usual tax dodging and weaseling around regulations, plus some heavier corruption stuff. But the big thing is the people who went missing. Government oversight, whistle-blowers, business rivals. FBI investigated him and turned up nothin’._

Venom understood that humans took the rule of law and sanctity of life very seriously, but it still found it hard to care. Everyone died. It had learned to protect itself, and now to protect Eddie, but protecting faceless businesspeople was a stretch. If anything, killing one’s rivals seemed like the smart move. 

_Light’s out,_ Eddie said. The last high office window had indeed gone dark. The remaining lights in some lower windows appeared to be janitorial staff at work. Still a risk, Eddie’s thoughts noted, but at 3 am, the building was as empty as it would ever be.

They scaled the side, staying far from lit windows. Venom was impatient with the cautious approach, but it was getting better at secrecy. Careful and quiet were skills they’d been practicing a lot, skills that kept them safe, Eddie insisted. Venom had to admit that it was at least good for avoiding police sirens. Police sirens were the worst.

They found their way to an openable window in the smooth sheet of glass, wrenched the handle until the lock broke, and slunk in. They tread softly along the hallway, alert for footsteps, then headed up the stairs to the top floor, where Weston’s own office suite resided. 

_Okay, V, like we practiced._

The hard part about picking locks for a Klyntar was not the delicate dexterity or the sensitivity to touch—it was the patience. Venom had broken the first dozen locks they’d practiced on. Which _had_ gotten them in. But according to Eddie, that wasn’t the point.

This lock was nothing too complicated. It was only the entrance to the lesser of the guest lounges, where low-priority supplicants waited or were shunted away by an assistant. Eddie and Venom headed straight through it and down the hallway, past the secretary and assistants’ rooms, conference rooms, and more lounges, to the very end, where they passed through yet another waiting room before they reached the inner sanctum. 

They locked the door behind themselves and glanced around the decadently minimalist office. Eddie’s knowledge told them that all the juicy stuff would be on the computers, but the computers were protected by password and fingerprint. The physical filing cabinets—which had a large sideroom all to themselves—would have to be enough.

It was an hour later that their fruitless search was interrupted by a sharp jolt of _danger_. 

**Eddie, someone is coming.** There weren't a lot of options for hiding places. Without waiting for a response, Venom seized control, leaping up to the ceiling and sticking there.

_The documents!_

**Forget them.**

_V, they’re out on the floor. They show we were here._

Venom let tendrils drip down, sticking to the sheets of paper and reeling them up. If they were caught, they would be a hell of a sight: a monstrous figure plastered spread-eagled on the ceiling, sheets of paper dangling from their body.

A key in the lock— _Good thing we locked the doors behind us._ Footsteps on carpet. The click of wheels on a rolling desk chair. Tapping on a keyboard.

 _Fuck. Who the hell comes into work at four in the morning?_ Eddie sounded almost offended by the prospect.

 **You have been doing work all night,** Venom pointed out, more to complain than to clarify. Night was supposed to be _their_ time.

_Yeah, but we’re committin' crimes._

**Is he not?**

_Good point. We need to get out of here as soon as we got a chance. Wish there was an openable window in this office._

**Any window is openable for us.**

_Not helpful, V. He’ll know someone was here._

**Boring. Fine, there was a window in the waiting room that had a handle.**

_Okay. He’s gotta leave eventually. As long as he doesn’t come into the filing room we’ll be—_

There was a click and the filing room door swung open. Weston passed below them without looking up. _Shit. Please don’t let him go for one of the drawers we left unlocked,_ Eddie hoped. Venom felt Eddie’s relief when Weston went for a drawer on the lower left instead. 

He flipped through some files and then pulled out his phone. “Maris, where are you with the kid?” A pause. “You got him? Good. Update me when Thompson responds to the demands.” He put away the files, turned around— _don’t look up, don’t look up—_ and went back to the main office.

Eddie took a slow, deep breath through their fanged maw. _Well. Definitely up to crime._ His mind was racing.

 **He has not discovered us,** Venom reassured him. **We are not a kid. Or Thompson. We are safe.**

_He’s kidnapped someone, V. A child. He’s holding a child for ransom._

Ah. That explained it. Kidnapped children, in Eddie’s mind, were relevant to them, because of course _all_ bad things on the planet were somehow relevant to them. Not like they had enough problems of their own.

 **Thompson will buy their child,** Venom tried to reassure Eddie.

All it accomplished was kicking the reporter’s mind into high gear.

_What would a man like Weston want with an ordinary kidnapping? His company's worth billions. His crimes are never that direct. This has to be about business. Is Thompson—Oh, Productic. It’s one of Weston’s biggest rivals and the CEO is named Thompson. If Weston could force him to make a bad business move, he could win billions. He’s careful though; he won’t let it be traced back. It’ll be somethin' subtle, somethin' that plays in his favor over time. Somethin' that doesn’t give him obvious motive—_

**A man with a lot of money will have more money,** Venom summarized.

 _A man with power will have more power,_ Eddie corrected. _And he’s putting a child through fuck-knows-what to get it. And then he’ll use it to hurt more people and get more power._

Eddie was in one of his hero moods, Venom realized. There’d be no persuading him to drop it, but maybe he could still be reasoned with. **We should eat him.**

_No way. If Weston drops off the map, they’ll probably kill the kid to tie off loose ends. We gotta find them._

~~~

Eddie spent the day investigating. Well, stalking. 

Thompson nominally lived in New York, but a search of recent news with his name quickly turned up a major deal he’d just wrapped up in San Francisco. That was good, that meant the kid was probably being held here in town. Now where would the family have been staying? If he could find the site of the kidnapping, they might be able to pick up some kind of trail. 

They were still at work, still turning over a strategy, when Eddie’s editor, Shaban, headed over to their desk. Eddie casually closed out the online gossip magazine he’d been combing before Shaban could see. “What’s up?”

“A millionaire’s kid just got kidnapped.”

Their stomach sank. “Who?”

“Harrison Thompson’s son. In the early hours of the morning. News just broke, but there’s not a lotta detail. You know more about New York millionaires than anyone.” It hung in the air like a question.

“Sure, I looked into Thompson for the Globe, if that’s what you’re asking. A few times actually.”

“Perfect. Find a new angle.”

“You think there’s more to it than ransom?”

Shaban shrugged his shoulders. “You tell me.” 

When he left, Eddie sat in their chair a minute and mulled over the conversation.

**Does he suspect us.**

_No. But it's good and bad. It gives me an excuse to poke around, but it also ties me to the case. We’ll have to be careful._

~~~

They took the motorcycle over to the condo where the Thompsons were staying. Police tape and broad daylight made it impossible to get close without making a scene. The Thompsons, presumably, were out of the house until the crime scene was closed, but Eddie wasn’t the only reporter loitering in hopes of fresh news. 

Eddie started scanning the scene more closely. Venom’s attention sharpened, then waned when it found his thoughts clouded with memories of past investigations. **Me thing,** Venom grumbled.

_Sorry, V._

The front door was swaying slightly in the breeze, latch and lock obviously broken, so there was no mystery about point of entry. 

There were tiny yellow cards with black numbers sitting on the front steps, marking evidence. By their placement, they had to be footprints, but Eddie didn’t see any—no, there were slightly glossy patches on the concrete. What made a footprint like that? Shame they petered out at the sidewalk. They didn't lead anywhere—unless.

_How much exactly can you taste?_

He got only confusion from Venom.

_Sometimes the police can do like a chemical analysis of a footprint and find out where a person’s been._

Venom’s attention focused. **I am good at knowing chemicals.**

_Exactly. Could you taste the footprints? See what you can find?_

It eased a whisker-thin tendril from under their trouser cuff and snaked it through a crack in the sidewalk. The tendril touched the nearest of the footprints and Eddie was drowned in sensory input.

There were dozens of chemical components, but they meant nothing to him. He might as well have been trying to read Klingon in Morse code.

_Do you know what these are?_

**Mostly milk,** Venom informed him. 

Well that explained the strange translucent footprints. The kidnappers must have stepped in it inside the house.

_Anything else?_

**Dirt.**

_Anything specific to a place?_ Eddie tried.

**Tastes go to things. Not places.**

_But certain places have certain things. Like a factory might taste like, I dunno, some kind of plastic. Or a gas station could taste like gasoline._

Venom considered for a bit. It mentally indicated a few proteins. **Soy. Sesame. And fish. The proteins are not broken.**

_So raw? Sounds like a sushi place. Okay, what else?_

**Concrete.**

_That could be anywhere. Concrete’s concrete, right?_

**No. Anywhere it does not stick to shoes. It was powder, then it mixed with the milk. It was liquid when they walked here and it dried during the day.**

_Ohhh. Good sleuthing. Okay, so probably a construction site. A sushi restaurant near a construction site. That’s somethin’. V, I ever tell you you’re amazing?_

Venom preened.

_You got anything else?_

**Dog shit.**

_Wonderful._

~~~

It was late evening and they’d checked what had to be half the sushi places in the city before they hit the jackpot. They spotted the abandoned office complex right away, catty-corner to a shop under renovation and opposite a Japanese restaurant.

There wasn’t much space to hide, so they staked out the office building from a distance until full darkness fell. The streetlight in front of the building was out, leaving it in shadow. Convenient. Venom was the first to spot the faint glimmer of light between the boards of an upper window. They scaled the face of the building easily and peeked inside. 

A teen with dark curls and a rumpled dress shirt and slacks was asleep on the floor, handcuffed to a radiator. There were no visible guards in the room, just a table with a strange little white box resting on it. Time to work fast.

Venom ripped a board off a window and was about to let it fall when Eddie shot a tendril out to grab it.

_Dropping ‘em will make noise. Noise’ll bring guards._

As if guards posed any threat to _them._

_This kid can’t be collateral in his own rescue, V._

Whatever.

Venom hung on to the rest of the boards as it pried them off and broke the latch on the window. They crawled inside and set the boards gently on the ground. There was a prick of _danger_ as they approached the boy, and they got ready to cover his mouth if he screamed—

They collapsed, writhing on the floor as noise sheared through their flesh like a razor blade, slicing right down to the core of them, to the place where they were connected, and severing it, leaving Venom to drip from Eddie’s shaking body like black blood from a poisoned wound.

The sound cut off. Venom crashed into the silence like falling from a high place into water: one second writhing and helpless and the next floating in noiseless nothing, not sure which way was up.

The warmth of Eddie was jerked away before it could slink back inside. It felt vibrations in the floor—thumping, scuffling—and crawled towards the struggle. There was a spot of bright light—it couldn’t see on its own per se, but it had a vague sense of light and darkness. It barely registered the glow before the light flared into a jet of searing heat. Venom felt its flesh sizzle and pop as it burned away. Slow, agonizing seconds ticked by as it tried to flee and the stream of fire tracked its crawl across the concrete floor. It slowed, too weak to keep moving forward—and then suddenly there was dark and cool, except for the faint burn of the oxygen atmosphere. 

Through the floor came the vibrations of heavy footsteps, moving closer. With a massive effort, Venom managed to throw itself blindly across the room, away from its attackers. It felt a faint warmth and a tingle of electricity nearby. Life. It reached out and slid inside.

The body was not what it expected: it was small and cool and still. Asleep. Venom tasted sedatives in its blood. That was fine; the host’s cooperation was unnecessary. Venom spread what was left of its mass through the limbs and tried to move them, but it was too weak from the fire. Well, there was more than one way to puppeteer an unconscious body. It slid clumsy tendrils into the spine and managed to hijack the motor neurons. The body jerked forward and was caught by its handcuff. Venom forced it to keep pulling, but its tiny, soft muscles weren’t strong enough to break free. 

Venom felt a strange numbness creeping up on it, but it didn’t let up. It could break the host’s wrist if necessary. It had to get to Eddie. They were going to kill him. It had to…

~~~

Eddie lay on the floor of the dark closet, breathing shallowly and trying not to agitate the stabbing pains that were probably broken ribs. His breath slunk out through his raw throat and left his body crumpled and empty. He tried to string ideas together, to think his way through the simple cuffs and brittle wood door and guards who would have been small fry on any other day, but his mind kept falling back into the same rut, tracking through last night second by second, cataloging each mistake.

Weston had been ready for them. He must've noticed them on security footage. How could Eddie have been so careless? He’d gotten Venom killed. He’d gotten Venom burned alive. A better partner would have been more cautious. A better partner would have gone down fighting. A better partner would grieve and rage, Eddie thought, but he felt too empty to feel anything else.

Eddie had seen the flamethrower in the man’s hand and he’d screamed Venom’s name, forgetting it couldn’t hear. When the flame finally died away there’d been nothing left at all, just a bright afterimage in the blackness. And nothing Eddie could do but watch.

~~~

Venom woke in a haze of warmth and electricity. It felt organs pressing around it, but the taste was unfamiliar. 

The boy. Eddie. Fuck.

It tried to seize control again. The boy shrieked like a cartoon damsel when his hand jerked against the cuffs without his input.

Venom felt sluggish, beyond the weakness of its injuries. There was a bitter taste in the boy’s blood. There had been… strange chemicals. Sedatives. They were gone now; they had worn off—no, they had been processed. This bitter taste was… a by-product? It seemed to be numbing Venom, stopping it from taking full control. 

Nothing for it: **Hello.**

The boy shrieked again and pressed his back against the radiator, trying to look around the room.

**Quiet. The guards will come.**

“What the fuck!”

 **My name is Venom. What is your name,** Venom said slowly. Normally it would have relished the fear, but it needed this boy to cooperate. And most of all, to not scream.

It was partially successful. This time the “What the fuck,” was whispered.

 **We need to get out of here,** Venom tried again.

“What the hell are you?”

**An alien.**

“Are you _inside me?_ ”

**Yes. My species are symbiotes.**

Beneath shock, exhaustion, and awakening self-preservation instincts, Venom felt a flicker of curiosity. The boy took a few deep breaths and clawed his way to rationality. He was hallucinating from stress and dehydration. Definitely.

**You are not hallucinating. We came to rescue you and we were ambushed. I was forced to hide in you.**

Could it read his mind? the boy wondered. “Some rescue mission,” he said out loud.

**Yes.**

Huh?

**I can read your mind.**

Fuck. 

**We need to work together to get out of here.**

“No, escaping is dangerous,” the boy hissed. “My father will pay the ransom. It’ll be fine.” It was what Venom had been telling Eddie all along and yet there was… doubt. Venom was definitely in favor of the not-my-problem approach, but even it had a small (very small) circle of people it cared about. From what it knew of humanity, offspring were supposed to be at the core of that circle. And still it could feel that this boy believed, in his heart of hearts, that his father would choose money over him.

Interesting. What a very Klyntar kind of human.

 **What is your name?** Venom asked again.

“Eugene Thompson. But most people call me Flash.”

**Eugene, listen to me. We will work together and we will get out of here and we will save you and me and my partner.**

“It’s too dangerous.”

 **Staying here is more dangerous. If I was them, a human who wanted money, I would let your father pay and then kill you anyway so you could not tell anyone who took you.** Venom paused to consider. **Actually, first I would ask for another, bigger payment and then when your father paid** **_that_ ** **one, I would ask again. And if he resisted I would send him your fingers and your toes and your ears and anything else unnecessary one at a time and keep asking for payments and then, when your father would not give any more money, I would kill you and ea—hide your body. That would be the logical thing to do.**

Eugene buried his head in his arm and made an effort to control his panic. “Great! Awesome. You’ve really thought this through, huh?” His voice was pitching up with anxiety.

**That is not the point, Eugene. The point is, we need to leave.**

“We’re handcuffed.”

**I can fix that. But I need to know you will not freak out and do something stupid.**

“I won’t freak out and do something stupid,” Eugene mumbled.

**You will do everything I say?**

“Whatever helps me escape.”

 **Good enough.** Venom slid a tendril out of Eugene’s arm—it was bruised where Venom had tried to jerk free—and fit it into the lock. The cuff sprang open with a click. Eugene pulled his hand free and got to his feet. He was shaking all over.

 **The window,** Venom said.

Eugene balked. “Are you crazy?”

Venom coated the tips of his fingers in claws, spreading what little mass he had left up the arms to reinforce them. **I will help us climb.**

“No way. We’re going out the door.”

**There are guards. We climbed in; we can climb out.**

Eugene hesitated. “Fine.”

Then the door burst open. “Down on the floor!” 

**Run.**

Eugene made a break for the window, hands scrabbling to pull it up as the guards closed distance in a sprint. He half-jumped-half-fell out; a hand brushed against his leg without finding purchase; Venom dug claws into the brick to slow their fall. And then they were on their hands and knees on a sun-warmed sidewalk, and they were running for the nearest— _danger._

Venom poured his mass onto their back. There was one shot, two, three—they stumbled; they picked themselves up; and they were around the corner.

Venom put claws on their hands again and they scrambled onto the roof of a small convenience store, running, clambering, jumping over rooftops to safety. 

They came to a stop almost twenty minutes later. Eugene all but collapsed on the bare concrete roof, shaking like a leaf, all his attention straining for the sounds of pursuit. After a few minutes he reached over his shoulder and pressed his fingers against the bruise blooming on his back, the mark of the third bullet that had found its target.

“You saved my life.”

Eight hours ago, Venom hadn’t cared whether the child lived or died, but Eugene was alive and Venom was relieved.

“I have to get home.”

**No.**

“What do you mean ‘no?’ Are you keeping me prisoner?”

**Eddie is still back there. I am not leaving him.**

“No way.”

**If you go home, you will be protected. It will be difficult to go back for him.**

“He’s probably not even there! We got away. We know where their hideout is. They’re not gonna wait for us to lead the police back.” 

He had a point.

“I’m starving and I’m exhausted and I’m going home! We’re too weak to take them now anyway.”

Also a good point. Venom briefly considered bringing him to it and Eddie’s apartment to recuperate until they could launch another rescue, but no, Weston’s men knew who Eddie was now, their place would be watched… Well, that was an idea.

**We will go to your home and rest. Then we will stake out our—me and Eddie’s—apartment. Weston’s men will search it. They will lead us to their new hiding place.**

“Fuck no. Find someone else to possess.”

**Impossible.**

“There’s a whole city of people out there!”

**And less than a dozen matches.**

“What? You're gonna fill out an OKCupid profile?”

**Biologically. It was one chance in a hundred thousand your body did not reject me.**

He felt Eugene’s hesitation. The boy felt like he owed Venom something for saving him. That was naive, but Venom wasn’t complaining.

 **Once I am well, I can heal you. Keep you safe from further attacks,** it prodded.

“Fine,” the teenager grumbled. “But nobody sees you. Especially not my mother and father. You stay inside and quiet.”

 **Fine.** It was preferable to wandering the city looking for a match. Chances were good it would starve or die of oxygen exposure before it found one.

“Don’t think once you’re better you’re gonna force me to go on some wild goose chase looking for your partner, who is definitely dead, by the way.”

**He is not.**

“I don’t care. If an alien kidnaps me my father will get like, the Avengers or Spider-man or someone to rescue me.”

~~~

The last thing Flash wanted when he got back was the old publicity song and dance. Not that cops were really publicity, but the idea was the same.

We were so worried.

I don’t know what we would do if we lost him again.

We’re just so glad to have him back.

Flash was too tired to put on his usual performance. (“He’s in shock, poor thing,” his mother murmured.) He mumbled answers police questions and lied as needed: His handcuffs had come loose on their own. He’d made a bolt down the stairs and out the front door. The shots had missed him. He’d fled on the street. He’d just been lucky. 

Venom intervened only once: **Tell them you heard them mention Weston. They answered to him.**

Flash told them.

When it was all over, his mother’s hand lingered awkwardly on his shoulder, caught between show and reality. It stayed there all the way back to the hotel where they were staying. When the door closed behind them, it slipped off, but she still hesitated in the sitting room of their suite, while behind her his father sat down at a laptop and ignored them. Flash thought a better son would probably say something, reassure her, but he couldn't think of anything to say.

He felt Venom stir uncomfortably in his chest. 

“You’re fine,” she sighed, and turned away. He thought she might have meant to say “I’m glad you’re fine,” or “You’ll be fine,” but she hadn’t said that and he didn’t know how to answer. He went to his own room and laid down on the bed.

~~~

Venom tentatively wrapped itself around Eugene’s chest. It half expected the boy to complain, but he just put a pillow over his head.

**Your parents upset you.**

“It’s fine,” Eugene muttered into the pillow. “It’s just that during the Blip, you know, they got used to me not being around. It’s not a big deal.”

The idea the human parents would just fall out of the habit of having a child didn’t sound right, but Venom didn’t know enough about human families to be sure. Its only real model was Eddie, whose upbringing, it knew, had not followed species norms. 

Carl Brock—Eddie’s father, although Eddie rarely thought of him by that word—was nothing at all like Rosie and Harrison Thompson. But the feeling in Flash’s mind right now was one Venom knew well, a poisonous cocktail of hurt and want and dread that it had felt in many of Eddie’s childhood memories.

This wasn’t its business. This wasn’t its problem. Eugene—Flash—wasn’t its other. But Venom felt—what was it? Empathy. That was what Eddie called it. He felt it all the time, for almost everyone. How did he manage it? Empathy for one person was stressful enough.

Venom let its thoughts drift to the questions it'd been avoiding. Where was Eddie now? Was he still alive? How badly had he been hurt in the fight? Venom wanted nothing more than to spread itself through their body, searching out and repairing every last mark of their failure.

Speaking of, the bruises on Flash's back and wrist might raise questions. Safer to hide them. It soaked into the damaged areas and busied itself absorbing blood and repairing damaged vessels.

“What are you doing?” Flash muttered into the pillow. 

**Fixing you.**

“Oh.”

There was a moment of silence.

And then, just as Flash was drifting off, _Thanks._

~~~

“Where are you taking me?” 

There was no answer, but the guard behind him gave him a shove and he stumbled, unable to balance with his hands zip-tied behind him. 

The other guard grabbed him by his shirt. “No use left for you,” he smirked. Eddie just stared at the man. His hair was cropped so short that Eddie wondered whether he usually shaved his head and had just gotten behind on personal grooming this week.

Buzzcut shook him.“What’re you starin' at?” 

Eddie should really have been more upset about the news of his imminent murder, but it was what he’d been expecting. Besides, he felt like he’d spent his emotional budget for the month. At times like this—and there had been several times like this before, which really spoke to the kind of life he’d lived; hell, he was overdue for a murder—he fell back on sarcasm. “Lemme guess, you’re gonna shoot me and dump my body in the ocean tied to a cinder block," he sighed. "That’s a new one.” 

“Better than what R&D had planned for you,” the man who had shoved him spoke up. Eddie twisted around in Buzzcut’s grip and took in the cruel smile on the other guard's face. The man was absurdly massive. His name would be Gaston, Eddie decided.

“Too bad. I was looking forward to a little live surgery.” 

“No point when your pet monster got away,” Gaston said. “It could be in Wisconsin by now.”

Got away. Got away. Got away. Eddie drew in a full breath for the first time in twenty-four hours and felt the words echo around his head. Turned out he had an emotional reserve left after all.

“It survived,” he said. He was pleased with how level his voice sounded, but his hope must have shown on his face, because Buzzcut snorted. 

“Don’t get excited. Bastard took the kid and left you to rot.”

Eddie laughed. God, he hoped he wasn’t about to have a hysterical breakdown. He needed his wits about him. Buzzcut gave him another shake and Eddie made a monumental effort to get it together. “It’ll be back.”

Gaston looked pitying. “What? You think the snot monster’s sentimental? Yeah sure, hold onto _that_ hope.”

“Not sentimental,” Eddie said, thinking fast, calculating how much of the truth they’d buy. “It’s a chemical thing. It needs a match, you know, like an organ transplant. Humans aren’t good for it. It’s like one in a billion. Sooner or later, that body it’s in'll start shutting down, an’ it won’t have a choice. It’ll come back.”

Gaston narrowed his eyes at Eddie. “Price, call Weston.”

~~~

“So you guys were on a rescue mission for me?” Flash asked around a mouthful of breakfast.

On the TV, an announcer was saying that Weston had gone into hiding before the police could apprehend him.

 **Sure,** Venom said absently.

“What are you, like some kind of back alley Avengers or something?”

**No. Eddie likes kids.**

It felt a wave of sadness at the thought. It barely heard when Flash grumbled that he wasn’t a kid.

Flash ate in silence for a few minutes.

 _Sorry, I guess,_ Flash thought hesitantly. _About your partner. Not that it’s my fault or anything, but it sucks._

Venom wasn’t sure what to do with that. It thought that humans usually said “thank you” or “it’s okay” in response to an apology, but it didn’t feel very grateful and it definitely wasn’t okay.

**It does.**

~~~

With Weston still at large, Flash wasn't allowed out of the penthouse, so he occupied himself on his computer playing games and watching vlogs. He started on a script for a vlog of his own, but all he could seem to do was start before it died on the page. He closed the Google Doc and deleted it for good measure. His handful of regular viewers were tweeting at him about the news report they’d seen. He turned off twitter notifications. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to think about whether—he didn't want to think about what would have happened when his father paid for him. 

Days cycled past, distinguished only by Venom’s growing anxiety and strength. Flash kept expecting the symbiote to take control and force him to go looking for its partner, but it didn’t happen.

On the fourth day, Flash found the courage to bring it up. “What are you going to do about Eddie?”

 **I am open to suggestions,** the creature answered tensely.

“What’s stopping you?”

**I have no way to find a new host.**

“You’re not gonna make me?” Flash asked nervously.

**You are a child.**

Flash’s first thought was to protest that he wasn’t a child, but that seemed like a dangerous tack. His second thought was to wonder why Venom was suddenly reluctant to harm children.

 **I am not sentimental. You are just too weak to be useful,** Venom grumbled. 

Flash shrugged it off and went back to his laptop.

He quickly found himself back where he always went when he was stressed: videos of Spider-Man sightings. He opened one of his favorite channels and pulled up a clip he'd seen hundreds of times before. He let himself be lulled by its familiarity—the arcs of color, the hiss of webbing, the elegant flips and midair twists, the thrill of a close miss softened by the knowledge that Spider-Man would make it, had made it.

He clicked on to another video and saw that Venom had manifested a head to watch too. "What, you like Spider-Man too?"

Venom narrowed its eyes. **"Why do you watch these videos?"**

"Um, did we just watch the same video? He's like crazy flexible and strong and he shoots webs and he saves people and—"

 **"You admire him,"** Venom said.

"Obviously. He’s amazing."

**"You want to be a superhero?"**

"Who doesn't?"

Venom seemed like it was about to say something else, but then it turned back to the screen.

They watched in silence as Spider-Man pulled a young boy out of the line of fire. Oh. Huh. Flash sat for a minute digesting that line of thought before he spoke. "This is my chance to be Spider-man. Isn't it?"

There was a long pause from Venom. Flash felt the symbiote wanting to say no, wanting to say yes. **“If you think you are up to it.”**

“I am.”

 **“I have recovered enough that I can protect you. But they know my weaknesses. It will be dangerous, Flash.”** Did Venom sound concerned?

Flash took a deep breath in. “Let’s do this.”

~~~

“What’s up Flash Mob, it’s—”

**Flash, what are you doing?**

Flash gestured at the glowing phone like it was self-evident. “This’ll get a million hits on YouTube,” he whispered. 

**No.**

Flash scoffed. “I can keep a secret. It’s not like I’ll say Eddie’s name on camera or anything.”

Venom reached out with a tendril and ended the recording. **You just did. Delete it.**

“I’ll edit it out later,” the boy said dismissively.

 **_No_ ** **, Flash.**

“Come on. If you want to be a big-time superhero you gotta self-promote!”

 **Does Spider-Man take pictures of himself?** Venom tried.

“Well, no.”

**No pictures. We are on a nighttime stakeout. We are being sneaky.**

“Ugh.”

This child’s enthusiasm about an incredibly dangerous assault on an enemy armed with flamethrowers and sonic weapons was dangerous and annoying. And maybe just a tiny bit endearing. Even though that was a stupid feeling that didn’t make sense at all.

 **We are going around the building again,** Venom commanded, trying to shake off the thought.

“There’s no one here, V!” Flash complained. “We checked like thirty times already.”

Venom just covered him and started climbing over the dark roof, scanning their surroundings.

_I’m telling you, nothing’s changed. Look, same car with the parking ticket. Same guy watching TV. Even that guy with the beard is back._

Venom stopped. **He was here before?**

_Yeah, when we first got here around midnight._

Venom gazed at the man, but he didn’t have humans’ knack for recognizing faces. **Are you sure?**

 _Of course I’m sure. Remember? He was the one in that old gray car that was parked there for like, forever._ Venom watched the man get into a black sedan, holding a cup of coffee. 

**How many cars do people usually have?**

_Depends. My family has—_

**It is unusual for him to be here in a different car,** Venom clarified.

Flash noticed the black sedan for the first time. _Oh. Yeah, kinda._

 **And unusual to drink coffee at night,** Venom observed.

_Shit, is he watching the house?_

**Yes. Now we will watch** **_him_ ** **until he leaves again.**

~~~

They stalked the bearded man through another cup of coffee and a few bathroom breaks at the nearby gas station before he finally drove off and started heading out of the city. They almost lost him several times but always caught up to him when pulled over at a gas station or idled at a stop sign. He didn’t take the interstate, instead winding his way down smaller streets until he reached a small warehouse on the outskirts of the city.

They circled around the building for a good thirty minutes, searching for any advantage, peering in through high windows, trying to decide the best means of entry.

In the end they burst in through the front door. 

“Hello,” Weston said quietly. 

He stood in the back of the dark warehouse, illuminated by a band of yellow streetlight and flanked by bodyguards armed with flamethrowers. The small white box was there on the table beside him, plugged into the wall. Venom narrowed its eyes at it. That was the source of the noise. Behind Weston and the guards, it could see Eddie, lying bound and unconscious on the floor. 

Weston smiled with false warmth. “Getting you here was like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey. I suspected your reporter friend was the brains of the operation.” He placed a finger on the white box.

Nothing happened. 

Venom grinned right back at Weston. It hadn’t survived this far by being a mindless monster. It knew bait when it saw it. It knew not to charge in when its enemy had the advantage. And Flash, he knew that wall plugs were connected to wires which were in turn connected to breaker boxes. 

Weston’s lips tightened when the box didn't respond. “Take it down. But leave it alive.”

The goons stalked towards them from both sides, trying to fence them in. Flash and Venom shot a line of tendril up to the roof and swung themselves up and out of the line of fire before dropping down onto one of the men and slamming him into the concrete. They shot a tendril towards another, jerking his flamethrower out of his grasp before he could start it, and swung it like a morning star into the head of a third, who dropped like a rock. When the fourth goon took aim, they leaped onto the wall and stuck there with their claws. 

**What is this.**

_What?_

**We do not** **_swing_** **,** Venom protested. **Stop trying to be Spider-Man.**

_Look, I’m not the one in control here._

**You are… influencing us.**

_Is it working or not?_

**I guess the indignity does not matter if they are too dead to tell anyone.**

He felt Flash flinch away from that thought. They launched themselves towards the final goon, sending a stream of black goo into his face as they deliberately overshot him. When they landed behind him, the tendril stuck to his face jerked him backward and his head hit the concrete with a crack. Venom felt Flash reassuring himself that the man would be fine.

They stalked towards Weston, who pulled out a pistol and emptied it at their chest. The bullets thudded harmlessly into Venom’s mass. They grabbed him by the neck and lifted him toward their grinning mouth—Venom felt Flash’s fear and hesitated. Weston had hurt him, but Weston was powerless now. It was not Weston Flash was afraid of. Venom settled for tracing a tongue up Weston’s grimacing face before it used a bit of its mass to bind and gag the man.

 _Let's call the police_.

**Hm. Yes. Now where can we find a phone.**

~~~

Eddie blinked sticky eyes. He was in their apartment. He was in their bed. _V?_

There was no answer in his head, but a familiar face leaned over him. Was that Thompson’s kid? **“Rest, Eddie,”** the boy said in an unnaturally deep voice.

Eddie tried to talk and made a croaking noise instead. His mouth felt dry. What had they drugged him with? He reached a hand out.

Venom covered the boy and took his hand. **“I am here. The drugs they gave you are bad for me. I will come back in a few hours, when they are gone.”**

Eddie cleared his throat and tried talking again. “What happened?”

**“We rescued you.”**

“Thank you." He hesitated. "Did you kidnap the kid we were supposed to be rescuing?”

“Hey, it was my idea!” a muffled voice protested from inside the symbiote.

~~~

They returned Flash through the window of his family’s suite. 

_Planning on adopting him?_

**What? No. That is stupid.**

_You didn’t want to send him home._

Venom hesitated. **I do not want to keep him.**

_But?_

**His home is… not good for him.**

Eddie went tense. _How?_

 **Not like that,** it said, sensing the memories that rose to the surface. **But he is unhappy.**

_Hm._

Venom sensed that Eddie wished they could make it better, but this problem was outside of their power to fix. They shot a tendril at one of the nearby buildings and swung away.

~~~

**“Flaaash.”** Venom tapped a giant claw against the window pane.

The kid nearly jumped out of his skin when he turned around and saw Venom at his bedroom window. He shoved it open.

“What are you doing here?”

Venom grinned. **“Kidnapping you. For old time's sake.”**

“Are there going to be guns again? I don’t want to go if there are going to be guns.”

**“No guns, only ice cream.”**

They set down in a back alley well away from the Thompson’s condo. Venom retreated into Eddie. “Hi,” Eddie said. “I was a little out of it last time we met, but I wanted to thank you for the rescue mission. And for keepin’ our secret.” It'd been a month and no wild tabloid headlines, so Eddie assumed he'd been keeping it. If not, this would be a friendly reminder.

Flash put his hands in his pockets. “It was no big deal.”

“How you holdin’ up?”

Flash shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“Alien symbiosis can be a lot for anyone,” Eddie said mildly. He knew Venom had held back from killing anyone in front of the kid, but still. He’d feel better if he knew Flash hadn’t been having screaming nightmares.

“It was pretty great,” Flash said. That, Eddie hadn’t been expecting. He watched Flash pensively. 

**I told you we got along,** Venom said.

_Yeah, like a house on fire._

**No, like a normal house that is very safe.**

“I’m glad you two hit it off. V’s missed you.”

 **Don’t tell lies,** Venom grumbled.

“Really?”

**I do not care about children. You are projecting.**

“Yeah. What about that ice cream?”

There wasn’t much open that time of night, but they found a gas station with a slushie machine and Eddie bought three. 

“So, we never got introduced properly. I'm Eddie. I’m a reporter. I live in San Francisco but I used to live here in New York.”

“Are you back visiting someone?”

"Nah, I’m here for work. I got an interview in the morning.” Not a lie—if Flash was following Eddie's work, he’d see the Stark article soon—but not the real reason. It was creepy enough to be a strange adult meeting up with a kid in the middle of the night. It’d make things even creepier if Flash thought that Eddie was looking out for him, which was half the truth, or that Eddie was looking over his shoulder to make sure he kept their secret, which was the other half.

Eddie led them into an alleyway and found a shadowed corner behind a dumpster where Venom could risk appearing a little. The symbiote manifested a head and downed its slushie in one gulp. Flash grinned. 

They hung out there for the better part of an hour. Flash started asking Venom all the questions about space he’d been too freaked out to wonder about before. What planets had it been to? What were they like? Where was its species from? How did it get to Earth? Those were touchy questions for Venom, and Eddie expected it to bite Flash’s head off (figuratively), but the symbiote kept its cool and answered them all. When Eddie sensed that Venom’s patience was finally starting to wear thin, he changed the topic to Flash’s hobbies and school work, which, shockingly, turned out to actually be pretty interesting. The kid was sharp, even if you wouldn't know it from his videos. 

It was around one in the morning when they brought him back to his window. Eddie and Venom sat on the roof above for a moment, watching the city. 

**Your mind is calm,** Venom commented.

 _I'm glad you two found each other,_ Eddie said. He felt Venom's unease. _You know I'm not looking to get rid of you. It's just good to know that if something ever happens, there's another host out there. Even if he's a spoiled teenager._ Eddie hated to think of the slow death that awaited Venom if it was ever stranded without a host. _Seems like he's not a bad kid._

**Hm.**

Suddenly there was a woosh and flash of red below them. Venom’s eyes tracked Spider-man down the boulevard and out of sight. _Don’t tell me you’re a Spidey fan too now._

**I am not a fan. I am… curious. Did you know he is a child too?**

They climbed across the rooftops towards their hotel. _That’s ridiculous._

 **It is not,** Venom said, offended at Eddie’s disbelief. **Well, maybe. But it is true.**

_How do you know?_

Venom considered. **His build. His breaking voice.** **And he says happen** ** _eeng_** **and go** ** _eeng._** **Only young people say that.**

_If you say so. So you planning on adoptin’ him too?_

Venom did not dignify that with an answer.

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven’t read the comics, after his high school years, Flash grows up to be a soldier, superhero, and long-term partner to Venom. I’ve seen a lot of fics where Venom meets MCU!Peter and I wanted to try something similar with Flash, especially considering how MCU!Flash is still a petty teenage bully a long way from his hero years. 
> 
> I've given V a sort of venom-sense here, based on the scenes in the movie where Venom tells Eddie not to open the door before it hears the knock and where Riot knows that the scientist behind it is trying to abort the launch. Venom does have a spider-sense in the comics, but there it picked it up from Peter rather than having it innately.
> 
> The white box Weston uses is based on mosquito alarms. A commercial mosquito alarm’s lowest setting is 8 kHz, well above Venom’s sensitive range of 4-6 kHz, so we'll say Weston modified it. A police siren, on the other hand, is around 1 kHz, and too low to be really dangerous, but I imagine Venom dislikes them anyway.
> 
> Peter's verbal tell that Venom refers to at the end is a phenomenon called -ing tensing, where the i sound in "bit" becomes the ee sound in "beet" if it comes before ng, so that "happening" sounds like "happeneeng." (If your first thought is a puzzled "but those are pronounced the same," congratulations! You have -ing tensing.) It is found among young people in the US, and Tom Holland does a remarkable job of replicating it as part of a teenage American accent. We humans don't notice a lot of tiny pronunciation differences like those because our conscious brains tune them out as normal variations in speech. But for an alien still getting used to English, they might stand out as confusing inconsistencies in the language.


End file.
